Rambling of An Apple Fan Towards Apple Marketing Choices

In the days of Steve Jobs, buying an iDevices (iPhone and iPad) used to be very easy and straightforward thanks to the binary choices presented. This may surprise you, but most users typically do not want to be offered with a lot of choice, they want to be lock down and just buy things that are offered. Ask yourselves whether this is true. As the saying goes, "with choices comes responsibility". In this context, that means you would have to go through tons of research (be it written or video reviews) and outlining each and every decision before fork out your hard, cold cash. Granted, iDevices are never cheap to begin with, and never will. With the hefty price that you paid though, you earn yourself a social stature in a higher hierarchy, or such is the stereotype of spotting anyone with an iDevices.

The Switch of Apple Marketing Scheme

Let us now look at how Apple marketing scheme for iDevices had since changes during the days of the late Steve Jobs from the introduction of the first generation iPhone in June 29, 2007 to the iPhone 4S in October 14, 2011. Note that Steve Job was still working on the design decision on the iPhone 4S though do not have the opportunity to present it.

It used to be only two choices when it comes to purchasing an iDevice. Want to make a phone call, there is iPhone. No? Well there is iPad. No fuzziness what-so-ever.

Purchasing Route

Say you are going for iPhone, the things that you only need to consider next are also plain simple, which are colors (black/white) and capacity (16, 32, 64GB). The same decision goes for iPad as well.

No brainer purchasing decision for iPhone 4S.

Ever since Tim Cook became the CEO of Apple, things had changed rather substantially. Not to be blunt but he had changed, or should I say diversify the product lineup. This is clearly seen with the introduction of iPad Mini and the screen size options for iPhone 6.

iPhone 6 selection options.

iPhone

Now when you are up to purchase an iPhone, you now has another factor to consider on top of the aforementioned factors: screen size. In particular, you now have the option to choose between 4.7 inch for iPhone 6 or 5.6 inch for the iPhone 6 Plus. Though the number differences might seemed minute, its actually a day and night difference when you compare them side by side.

In the aspect of color, you now have three colors to choose from instead of the binary black and white, which are silver, space gray, and gold.

Personally I do not think that the launching of Touch ID is entirely necessary and justified for purchase, for most people anyways. Though the technology that is used to implement it might seemed revolutionary, apps rarely utilize it. Seriously, just count how many times you used it. It is just not that necessary. Even if Touch ID can be used for making payment, it would take ages for my country, or any developing country to have it widely deployed and practiced by people. Needless to say, such an impressive piece of technology marvel comes at a price, literally, that's the price tag that you are going to pay for the latest iDevices, and that is pretty much substantial to an already premium product. As it is true for all retail product, most of the money actually goes towards the research and marketing.

iPad

9.7 inch remains the standard screen size for iPad from the first generation iPad released in April 3, 2010 to the latest iPad Air in November 1, 2013. Well that is partially true, until its little brother, the iPad mini which featured 7.9 inch is introduced two years ago in November 2, 2012. With the introduction of iPhone 6 Plus I don't see much reason to purchase an iPad Mini now if you already had an iPad.

Final Thought

To be honest I kind of feel dismayed with the way that Apple is trying to diversify their products to catch up with the market trend. Put it this way, surely more options certainly brings no harm but I certainly would not want it to end up with those different diversity such as those of Android devices. Think of those 4, 5, 5.2, 5.5, 6, 6.x... inch of screen sizes. Looking at the highly anticipated upcoming October 16 Apple Event which would be held on 16 October at its headquarters in Cupertino, California, I would hit the ceiling if Apple actually announced a 10 inch+ iPad aside from the specs bump for their iPads lineup  :-P